Capitalism has a system cannot do without exploitation and discrimination. As the crisis of the system bites harder, the ruling class tends to look for scapegoats to blame for all the woes they place on the shoulder of the masses of the society. They try to divert people’s attention from their daily traumatizing suffering which they created in the first instance. They consciously exploit the cultural backwardness of the society. It is in this context that the anti-gay law recently passed in Nigeria can be clearly situated.

On Wednesday, 13 January 2014, Nigerian president, President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill banning homosexuality in Nigeria. The law did not just ban homosexual marriage but banned homosexuality as a whole. The Law states, “Any person, who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organizations or directly or indirectly makes public show of same-sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commits an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years in prison”.

Why the passage of the Bill now?This happens to be the honest question that needs to be asked. The Government acted as if the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community just arrived in Nigeria yesterday. No, the LGBT has always been with us although in secrecy. The answer to this is not farfetched, considering the crisis of the system confronting the Nigerian ruling elite. The bill is obviously to divert the attention of Nigerians away from the real issues confronting them, to seek a scapegoat to place the entire crisis on their shoulder and maximally exploit the cultural backwardness of overwhelming majority of Nigerians to their own advantage. To overwhelming majority of Nigerians, homosexuality is a matter of choice. There is nothing natural about it according to them. This feeling can be likened to the killing of twins in the olden days, absolutely unscientific and completely medieval in all its ramification. The only reference book to justify this erroneous belief remains the religious books. It is ironical that overwhelming majority are still afraid of Sodom and Gomorrah and have rushed behind the passage of this law but they are unable to ask themselves; why has Sodom and Gomorrah not applied to US, UK and other countries who had not passed this obnoxious law against LGBT.

ConclusionUnlike the way some petty-bourgeois LGBT activists are trying to divulge the struggle of LGBT away from the oppressed class struggle as a whole, Marxists asserts that the real freedom for LGBT members like any other oppressed minority can only be achieved when their struggle is linked to the struggle of the working class in the capitalist society as a whole. Just as the stoppage of the killing of twins was a triumph of civilization over barbarism, the real freedom for LGBT and other oppressed strata of society lie in overthrowing this oppressive system of capitalism and fighting for the socialist transformation of society. FORWARD TO SOCIALISM!